Isn't it wonderful. Only "credible" Warmists need be consulted. BTW, I as a scientist know and understand the scientific method. I can distinguish between bald assertions, and valid proven scientific facts. Global Warming via GHGs was a valid scientific, qualitative-only, hypothesis, when introduced. But several decades of quantitative research has now established that the true effect is tiny at best and, de minimus, of no concern any longer. At these levels it may probably be entirely beneficial. I fail to see how the World ends by a fluctuation of a few tenths of degrees in centuries, or can alter much when a diurnial temperature cycle can be a order of magnitude larger, never mind an annual cycle that is even larger still. I would certainly like the Warmist "pseudo-intelligentsia" to get their act together. They have said the reason Warming is not happening is that "Black Carbon" is preventing temperatures from rising. Yet here they argue that "Black Carbon is" a significant Warming agent. It can't be both. Well which is it??

The peakist Cassandras are proven wrong once agasin. I think it is significant that this estimate is going to be raised substantially, once again. It appears that only a few countries have actually mapped their shale deposits, so as more do so, the total will increase by a few orders of magnitude. Similarly, the technology for extraction is undergoing a flux right now, so technology will make much more recoverable. Regarding the comments by brain laundered tree huggers, to all practical intents and purposes, there is no longer much Air Pollution in North America, as technology has produced a fix, and the Air is rapidly clearing here. Even cleaner, "pristine", Air is also in the offing here. Now that Europe has decided, finally, to join the pollution free activity, and even countries like China are signing up to begin the effort, the worldwide solution is only a few decades away at most. They will then be able to breathe as freely as most Americans can now do. With resources freed and redirected from rather useless efforts at limiting a needed trace gas CO2, and the roadmap of technological solutions already established, and mass production infrastructure in place, progress will be rapid.

This is a nice piece of technological Progress.

Global Warming hysteria has about run its course, It can join Alar, Acid rain, DDT, CO2, plastic bags, aluminum cans, coal, CO2,and Black carbon, and other assorted challenges to mass hysteria in the Pantheon of Paranoia. Good Riddance. Al Gore and James Hansen have had more then their allotted 15 minutes of "fame". BW, You would be surprised just how stupid the established Warmists really are.

IO am somewhat amazed how quickly Chevy responded to the dud that was the new Malibu. They seem to have addressed all the problems including rear seat room perhaps. The new engine GDI, VVT and a simple valve lift control as well as S/S is at least in the same league with the best in the world, if not world leading as Mr. Carlson points out. Chevy appears to have remedied a millstone in their product line, very rapidly.

E-P Surely you are not one of those greens that think a CO2 molecule exhaled by an earnest Sierra Club environmentalist, is somehow greener than a CO2 molecule produced by an ICE. They are indistinguishable; and the "good" carbon atoms are not painted green. The point was that the CARB has passed a LEV III SULEV II (T2 Bin2) emission requirement for all vehicles that matches the emissions of any EV. That is precisely why they set that as the emissions target. There is no longer any distinction between an ICE ZEV, and an EV ZEV. All vehicles are the same ZEVs. But EV ZEVs don't cleanse the Air, while ICE ZEVs pump large volumes of Air through them and clean it so they do so. I concur in your opinion about the political ramifications of relying on imported petroleum. But that is yesterday's news. The US is set to become a net petroleum exporter once again, and will likely remain so for the next century or two. Even as it has reduced it CO2 emission from Man and Nature combined, to below Zero. North (and South) America is a NET Carbon dioxide Sink, emitting none on net, and absorbing and sequestering good amounts from Eurasia. It seems to me that the CARBite true believers have nothing to base their desires on any longer, other than pure arbitrary wishes that they desire EVS. They are intrenched, have the power, and want to impose EVs on everyone. Irrespective of whether or not the technology is mature enough to do so.

More theoretical answers to questions that no longer need to be asked. Truly your government in action, spending money.

I take it that you approve of taxing money from some poor hamburger flipper that makes minimum wage, to support your purchase of an EV. I don't know why the CARB of all people are looking at the sacred EV. Their proposed and adopted, Lev III SuLEV II emission regulation will make every car sold, gasoline, or fuel oil powered, the same as an electric EV. After all, that was why that level of emiossions was originally created, thye wanted to show how clean an EV was. Detroit has already beaten them to tthe punch and 25% of the Cars on the road in California are ALREADY EV emissions compliant. But then again the holy druid high priest greens think the lack of pollution from EVs, is better somehow than teh same lack of pollution from a comaplant SULEV II ICE auto. They will all be ZEVs.

It would appear from the graphs in the article, that California, home of the powerful eco-loons is the "most CO2 emitting" State. But of course liars can figure. All this measures is the human CO2 reported emitted by honest conscientious persons and companies reporting their human created CO2 emsissions. It excluudes those who don't report. That is a distorted estimate because it considers only about 3% of annual CO2 emissions and absorption, and that human 3%, may be as much as 30% wrong. The EPA bureaucratic clowns cannot force the mighty Sequoia, nor the California palm tree's absorption/emissions figures. They are uninterested in the California farmer's estimates for CO2 absorption figures from their produce. But they are interested in his emissions from his farm equipment. But we know for a fact by scientific tests, that North America is a net CO2 sink, sequestering more CO2 than than it emits by Man or Nature combined, every year. In addition it absorbs a lot of CO2 blowing in on the prevailing winds from Eurasia. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/282/5388/442.abstract Why we should be still concerned, when America has reduced its human emitted CO2 to the levels desired by the expired Kyoto Treaty, so we are "saved" by the admissions of high druid-priests like James Hansen, and Paul Erlich. Why we should be concerned is a mystery to any intelligent, thinking person; but religious dogma must be worshipped as divine, no matter the truth and/or relavancy, to the faithful eco-green druids. Plus it pays the California CARBites very healthy and lucrative salaries and pensions, so why would they want to stop?

Sometimes you have to step back and see how far we have come since the 1970s. Tier 2 Bin 2 and Lev III SULEV II are emissions regulations patterned after the synthetic emission levels needed to propagandize and broadcast the benefits of EVs back when. Back then and even today, the ICE was condemned as the Devil Incarnate and poisoners of us all, and of course the dear "little children". The same sort of propaganda used to describe the Hun bayoneting Belgian mothers and children. IOW, these emission regulations codify a ZERO EMISSIONS VEHICLE. If an ICE and in this case an Evil Pickup truck can equal the emissions of a TESLA, the entire concern for emissions and dirty air simply goes away. The US has already achieved EPA Air Quality compliance over the entire country, with minor exceptions, merely employing more lax, Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions levels. Lax rules that are tougher thna anywhere else on the Planet. Yet we are inexplicably reticent in broadcasting the good news. Just as we are reticent in broadcasting that auto accident death rates have been halved; or that teenage motherhood have been reduced by a similar amount. When and not if, the vehicles meeting this level of emissions are available, we can afford to call off the war, and demobilize the expensive regulation army created to fight it. We can spend the money on other needful things. Call it a "Peace Dividend" if you like. But of course, no governmental organization will easily accept demobilization. There WILL BE political wars to be fought as the demobilizers will cetainly be denounced as wanting dirty Air and Dirty Water. Isn't it wonderful how American society can solve "intractable problems" that other countries say must simply be endured? Wasn't there a reference to the glorious "City on the Hill" in our literature that accomplished wonders?

Engineer Poet, You have the disadvantage of using logic and rational discussion versus these nitwit polemicists. Your program for progress make sense, nucler, electricity for short distances and liquid fuels where necessary. But these people don't care. They want to dwell in the mythical land of their dreams and don't want reality to intrude. I hand it to you to keep trying. I just get weary arguing with granite, that passes as brains.

TreeHuger, You can't possibly use logic to argue with a nitwit like Harvey D. He believes in his very bones that the world operates on Conspiracies of all sorts, simply to prevent his distorted Utopia of he and his friends from arriving. When you ask him why he didn't do this R&D himself, on his own 10++ years ago, if it was so simple, as he says, he swiftly changes the subject. The sad answer is that with his warped brain, he couldn't even envision what is being done with hard effort and the background of the present evolving state of the technology. Reality is that this combination of technologies is how the genuine Engineers of this World will improve our World. Engine efficiency and fuel economy has improved continuously for a century or more, but he doesn't know that or appreciate the progress. The Polemicists of Harvey D's stripe will never do much except sit on the sidelines and criticize. Cyphers are cyphers and that is all they will ever be. I have long ago given up trying to reason with Harvey D. Let him dwell in his mythical corrupted Paradise.

GDCI and other more efficient fuel consumption technologies for the ICE will come. Despite the Conspiracy theorists and assorted Luddite posters that are always here to post their screeds, the automobile is evolving as engineers work hard to improve it, and the auto is becomiing non-polluting. Perfection is unlikely, but for all practical purposes the auto is/will improve to the point that the Air is not polluted; and the concerns become purely academic. Indeed the Air across the USA has cleared using vehicles compying with T2B5. Roger as a conscientious engineer, is quite right to wonder about meeting Lev III SULEV II, aka T2B2 levels, or in layman's terms EV levels of emissions. But it wasn't the know-nothing lawyer-politicians who suggested reducing emissions to that level. It was the automakers who knowing it can be done, proposed it in lieu of more onerous regulations dreamed up by lawyer-politicians doing engineeering without a license. But as always the demgogues can and will double-cross and demand that, and still maintain their wish ideas for non-reality. These know-very-littles are always willing to set requirements without a thought on reality. Its too bad that the lawyesr succeed in exempting themselves from malpractice torts, while imposing their 33% fee-taxes on any errors committed by everyone else. What is sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the legal gander.

That is easy to understand. In Paris, the automobiles have very primitive emission controls, so the fewer number of Parisean autos still emit more VOCs than the greater number of Los Angelenos cars do. Surprised? Not at all. Euro Greens always talk a good show, but like their Former East Bloc socialists they remain the worst polluters.

In a time of sequestration, the Adminsitration can't restrain itself from shoveling money into ever more boondoggles...

CAGW is increasingly being seen as either a global scam, or at best an erroneous fear, and not a global problem. In the mean time the proportion of humanity that is joining the literate, advanced world has never been higher, both in raw numbers and percentages, as China and India reawaken. The Western Hemisphere is a significant portion of the total land mass on the Planet, and for the whole hemispere it is a proven fact that the Hemisphere is a NetCarbon dioxide Sink, producing no CO2, on Net. If that is being too hemispheric-centric for you, that is just too bad...

Figures don't lie but liars with an axe to grind can certainly figure. Fact: Despite the increase in population since 1990, the USA emits less human emitted CO2 then that year, which was the target of the Kyoto Treaty. So no matter what drivel these people conjjour up, the carbon dioxide intensity must have dropped significantly. Even if it meant anything,which increasingly is scientifically apparent has little significance anyway.

It has already been done and in production. This is a government subsidized non-starter; and a copy of Fiat's MultiAire electromechanical varaible valve control. Let's use more government R&D dollars to re-invent the Wheel next...

It is amazing to see how supposedly educated engineers like kelly and EP can be so brain laundered, inculcated with prejudices thus, and incapable of rational discussion. I told you where the source of those 300% cost overuns came from. It came from deliberate, maalicious efforts by educated people such as myself, consciously sabotaging immature fission nuclear plant designs and contruction activities. We don't do that any more because it is no longer necessary, plus it is now illegal. The NRC certified LWR plant designs are no longer immature. Further more experience has reavealed that the existing fleet of operating, and immature designs, with enforced due diligence, have functioned better than we anticipated. It is reasuring that with most of the shoddy plant constructions killed off, which we did, things are safer then we feared. Fact: less than 1/2 of 1% of the material in a used fuel rod consists of materials, called trans-Uranic actinides, with half lives longer than 300 years. That 1/2 of 1% does indeed live long, but that is what makes it only mildly radioactive, just like uranium pitchblende ore which contains these long lived but only mildly radioactive materials. There is even a technology, implemented by the French to partially eliminate even these long live trans-Uranic actinides. It is called "Actinide Burning". You can burn most of the tiny amount of trans-Uranic actinides in a existing LWR furnace, and they do so. We in the USA don't, since we can't refashion used fuel rods due to jugheaded, symbolic, anti-reprocessing laws, meant to stop proliferation that couldn't and didn't work. The symbolic act is ignored by all the world save the USA. They want to burn up more of the valuable fuel remaining, plus as a benefit, there is as a result, less radiaoctive waste to worry about. A few hundred years of time, or Actinide Burning, will eliminate long lived radioactive waste, revealing that the "... highly radioactive waste will exist for thousands of years", to be mostly nothing more than demagogy. The truth is that the highly radioctive part doesn't last for long i.e. more than a few hundred years, and the small, actually tiny, amount of long lived "waste" isn't highly radioactive, that's why it lives so long. In any case, no LWR has ever been used to create a nuclear weapon. Every country including the rogue states, made their high weapons grade Plutonium 239, in speacialized weapons fast breeder reactors. On the subject of non-proliferation, the commercial LWRs have done more disarmament in the world than any multitude of non proliferation gabfests. When you disassemble a nuclear weapon you are still left with chunks of bombgrade fissile materials, like highly enriched U-235 and purified Pu-239. The only way to permanently destroy these fissile materials is to burn them up in specialized nuclear furnaces. Otherwise the fissile material well just sit on shelves, waiting for some terrorist to steal it, or a changing government deciding to remake the material into nuclear bombs. We have used the several hundred existing commerical nuclear LWR powerplants to permanently "burn up and destroy forever" the fissile innards forever, for some 15,000 nuclear bombs left over from the Cold War. The World is safer by 15,000 warheads that don't exist to be used any longer. (Why the statesmen who negotiated this, didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize, I'll never know!) It even offsets the 10-40 nuclear warheads that the rogue states made. I would prefer that such a program continue, trading thousands for tens. The more power reactors there are, the more pressure there will be to make their fuel from old nuclear bombs. Fission LWRs of Gen III+ design are safe enough to build and use. They will serve until the their Fusion replacements are developed and built in the next quarter century, or so. ITER in France is both the last Fusion Physics experiment; and is also the first crude Engineering effort to design a pre-commercial Fusion powerplant, scaled up to the size of a commercial Fusion reactor. Such Fusion reactors are even better at burning up long lived radioactive waste, and can produce neutrons energetic enough to crack any trans-Uranic actinide, something the existing fleet of LWRS are unable to accomplish, making them only partial Actinide Burners.

kelly et al, Eliminate the subsidies for Wind and Solar and ...Puff Wind and Solar, those joke industries, disappear. Fact: the cost for nuclear power plants ballooned as a conscious act of guys like me, one of the charter memebers of the Union of Concerned Scientists. That was back when the UCS had any scientists there, and not just political hacks, blowhards, and fund raisers feathering their own nests, based on extracting monies from the rubes they frighten with their demagogy. The laws then were such that you could throw a "monkeywrench" into any construction activity and delay it for years and years. Meanwhile the financing meter continued running and bankrupted the Utility or damn near. We did that because their were a few horrible examples of shoddy construction going on, which had to be stopped, (and were). We did that mainly because designs back then were immature. All the safety studies were theoretical. No one had actually tested a plant to destruction. (No one wanted to spend a few $billion on a plant, and then simply destroy it.) Until Three Mile island did it inadvertantly; and lo and behold, despite rank stupidity the safety systems worked. No one in the industry had undertaken the kind of systems studies to ascertain a real probability of failure, given all the pieces working or not, like we did with Project Appollo. Now we have, by order of Congress and the reorganized NRC, into a purely watchdog with real teeth, and not a part-time nuclear cheerleader too. No one had standardized designs and poured over them in detail to ascertain possible problems. Each plant was unique and different. Supposedly, each was a little better, and that was how progress historically was made. Now we spend a couple of decades studying and approving a detailed standard design by the NRC, before a single spade of earth is turned. Back then each plant was constructed uniqely, one at a time and on site. Now major portions are factory built, insuring higher quality and timeliness. Back then the plant designs were not passive, and required plant operators to constantly monitor and drive the plants. Today after twenty years of design submission, critic review and comment, and NRC approval, the Gen III+ plant designs are walkaway passive; and will turn themselves off safely with no one around, and do it progressively within 72 hours. In essence today's Nuclear plants are what we principled, non-demagogic, critics wanted them to be back when; and alas simply were Not. Now they are. Finally, the laws were changed. You can't "monkey wrench" a constructing plant with endless lawsuits causing construction to halt, while lawyers and hired experts haggle as if we were suing over responsibility in an auto accident, anymore. Meanwhile construction went into hiatus, but costs continued to climb. We lost our chance during the last 20 year detailed certifcation review period, mandated and affirmed by the Energy Acts of 2005 and 2007. Today the legal playing field is completely different. So the building fission plants will be built and operate in 30-40% of the time, at planned cost, on time and on budget, drastically changing the cost structure assumptions of nuclear power plants, and current financing assumptions. Financial Institutions are awaiting proof, and we shall see with the 5 nuclear plants under construction in the USA. If or rather when, these projects complete as planned, in 2017-2018, the financing costs of a fission power plant will change and drop dramatically. BTW, The first two are about 45% completed and they are still on plan and budget to complete in a total of 4-5 years which is considerably different than the "monkeywrench" 12-to-Never years, of the financial history of the 1970s-1980s. Those historical profiles were atypical. As an aside, the Chinese who started their 8 plants of the same design, NRC certified, Westinghoue AP-1000s, a year or more earlier, are all on time and budget for a 4-5 year cycle, and should start generating electricity in late 2015-2016. We shall have our proof, one way the other soon.

Have they actually improved their models to the point that attributed deaths to the various categories of "bad air" is actually LESS THAN the actual number of deaths from all causes, in the period that they study? What a novel idea for EPA consultants...

Harvey D, Can you EVER see anything positive? Certainly the population has increased and the number of vehicles registered has increased. The mileage driven per vehicle has remained relatively constant. The consumption of Oil for Transport has declined some in spite of that; and where it comes from has changed tremendously, now overwhelmingly from the Western Hemisphere. As these people have measured the increased fuel economy mileage of new models, then also confirmed the effective mileage has increased significantly by gross measures of the auto fleet consumption. Cars are more efficient, and despite increased total usage, are using less total amounts of fuel. Your point that the newest cars are better than older cars only serves to reinforce the point that built in, the progress is destined to continue, as older cars are scrapped and replaced with newer more efficient models over time. Your conclusions are out right wrong. Why can't you ever admit that progress is occurring? Is your world view such that you are only happy if things must be constantly getting worse, even if they are not?

To have Nuclear Power promoted by the twin sources of nutter environmentalism is a farce and a disgrace. They can say all the lives that nuclear power would have saved but their efforts to fight and not promote nuclear power over the past 30 years is rediculous. Saying mea culpa after what they have done to demonize technology, and fight its implementation rings a might hollow. To see the posts here, from minds that they have filled with drivel, still denying there are positive aspects from fission that in retrospect far out weigh the bad, is to see the mindless monsters that their efforts have created. There was a plethora of even then obsolescent coal fired power that continue to operate to this day, under minimal grandfathered pollution allowances, that were slated for closure in the early 1980s. These plants have continued to exist as their was no other choice after the nukes to replace them were bankrupted and cancelled, simply because of their organizations demagogic opposition to all nuclear fission power. When you chose demagogy, it rapidly turns into across the board opposition based on half truths and FEAR. Of such are Birkenau and Auschwitz built. Genuine critics knew that some changes but a finite number, had to be done,to finsihand perfect the designs, but that did not apeal to the likes of Hansen et al, who were adamant that throwing the baby out with the bathwater was the proper thing to do. When the presently building nuclear plants, which are now walkaway passive, come in on budgeted costs, and on time, I hope some of this non rational opposition and fear can be appeased. We can then get on with providieng real power answers, and not will-of-the- wisps infantile wishes that don't actually work in practice.

No one. The leaders of Green Peace make a fine living scaring the bejesus out of the Rubes, and having their minions collect charitable contributions, that they then spend. They do nothing with the funds given them except consume them. They aver that they spend to "raise public consciousness" which is just another form of, and more fund raising. It is a tough life having to jet set about from Rio to Bali or such places, stay at fancy hotels, eat the best food, and hobnob with the elite, at Conferences which accomplish nothing. But the Green Peace leaders are willing to "sacrifice" and do it for us.

This is a sane approach. It has consumed almost 30 years to redesign the LWRs to be passive and fail safe. As they should have been from Day One, but were not. That created the nuclear power critics movement, subsequently taken over by the mindless anti-Nuke demagogues. The SMRs appraoch leads to more untested and distributrd power plants, if they are ever built. At best, Fission is a transitional power system for the 21 century at most, before being superceded by better technology. Before the SMRrs achieve detailed design review and certification in 25 years, the first safe, clean and inexhaustible Fusion power plants will be in progress. For power needs now, build the safe, passive, now certified and approved designs like the AP-1000.